


Role Reversal

by unnaturalhistory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Gen, The vaguest of shippy undertones, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 08:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11181153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnaturalhistory/pseuds/unnaturalhistory
Summary: Kepler prides himself on his ability to control the situation. Sometimes, however, control isn't possible.





	Role Reversal

The last thing Kepler saw before it all went to hell was Jacobi pointing, and a flicker of movement on the roof. He was too well-trained not to know a sniper when he saw one, and normally, he prided himself on his ability to react quickly to the situation.

This time, for the first time in his life, he was too slow.

The rest of the scene played out in fragments. The bullet missed its target, ripping through Kepler’s shoulder instead of his head, but that was enough to knock him to the ground. Jacobi was yelling something Kepler couldn’t quite make out, trying to drag him to his feet. _A simple extraction,_ Cutter had said, smiling that shark’s grin of his. _You lot shouldn’t have any trouble with a bunch of biochemists, I’m sure._ There was extraction protocol in case of FUBAR, but Kepler couldn’t quite remember the details through the pain in his shoulder and the deafening gunfire. He shoved Jacobi away with his good arm, struggling to stand on his own.

“Get moving. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Sir!” Jacobi looked torn, but the gunfire and shouting were getting closer. They didn’t have time to argue.

“That’s an _order_ , Mr. Jacobi,” Kepler managed to growl, and - as always - that did the trick. The conviction in Kepler’s voice seemed to shore up Jacobi’s own; he nodded smartly, and turned away. Kepler saw him put a hand to his ear as he stayed low, obviously calling up Maxwell. Good. Kepler put pressure on his wound as he brought up the rear, trying to control his increasingly ragged breathing. Squinting despite the still-dim light, Kepler rounded a corner after Jacobi--

\--and felt the unmistakable pressure of a gun’s muzzle against the small of his back. His training kicked in almost immediately; he felt his back straighten slightly, and had to grit his teeth against the resulting pain in his shoulder.

There was the click of a radio, and then a voice. “We got one,” the gun-holder said, digging the gun just the slightest bit harder into Kepler’s back.

 _Sloppy,_ he thought. A professional would have known not to get so close, or at least not to stay there. Kepler spun suddenly, reaching out to trap his would-be captor’s arm and turn the tables. Had this been any other day, that would be how the scene ended: with a gun in Kepler’s hand and his opponent on the ground with a bullet through his skull. But today, the sudden movement sent pain shooting through his wounded shoulder, the agony throwing off his concentration. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground with a foot on his back and his injured arm wrenched painfully behind him. The embarrassment of it all was almost worse than the pain.

The last thing he remembered thinking before passing out was, _If I survive, Cutter’s never going to let me hear the end of this._

***

Kepler woke up in a cell, which was only marginally better than the alternative. He was strapped to a chair, and his shoulder screamed in protest when he tried to test the bonds. At least, he thought sourly, they were better at restraining captives than they were at capturing them in the first place. Despite the allure of giving into self-flagellation,, Kepler’s training kicked in almost immediately. _Observe your situation. Catalogue available resources. Plan your survival strategy_.

Scanning the room, Kepler glimpsed several instruments that he was personally familiar with, and several others that he was not looking forward to becoming acquainted with. Not exactly what you would expect from a company supposedly working with retroviruses, but then again, Goddard was supposedly a tech conglomerate. Across from where he sat stood a smaller cell, basically a cage with a blanket on the floor like one might have for a particularly large dog.  Kepler was distracted from his inventory of the room by the sound of a door opening behind him. The sound of light footsteps and a brief rush of air preceded a woman’s amused voice.

“Awake already, are you? It seems you’ve got a faster metabolism than we initially guessed; we’ll have to take that into consideration, moving forwards.”

Eight steps from the door the woman paused, and Kepler just barely felt her fingers curl over the back of the chair. Eight steps to the chair, if she’d just come around where he could see her—

“You’ve made a bit of a mess of things for us, you know, GI Joe. We had to move all our operations, scour the whole building. I don’t suppose you’d make this easy and just tell me who sent you,” the woman said. Kepler was silent, and he felt the woman’s other hand come to rest on the chair. “Your name?”

“I’d hate for you to have me at a disadvantage,” he replied, and she laughed, pulling back.

“Oh, I can tell we’re going to have _fun_ together.” Three steps away from the chair, a quiet sound he couldn’t quite identify, and then five steps back. The woman now standing next to Kepler was petite and blonde, wearing a white labcoat and black glasses, and holding a syringe connected to a large hypodermic needle.

 _Short_ , Kepler thought, _small stride. Less than twenty feet to the door._ He did his best not to think about the needle. “Come on,” he said with a smile, making eye contact as best he could. “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

The woman smirked in return, leaning in to put her free hand on his injured shoulder. “You can call me Doctor,” she said, and _squeezed_.

Kepler’s vision went briefly white with pain, and when he could focus again the woman - Doctor - was no longer in his field of vision. Her voice came from behind him, again.

“You know, I’m glad you’re holding to that military discipline,” she said. “It really would have been a shame if you broke early; I’ve got some compounds I’ve just been _itching_ to move to human trials.” Step. Step. Step. And there she was, on his other side, smiling. “Now, hold still. You might feel a pinch--”

“What--?” Kepler felt the needle pierce the thin skin of his inner elbow, the pressure of liquid being forced into his veins. Five seconds passed with no effect. Then the pain suddenly blossomed, radiating from that single point and spreading like wildfire, burning him from the inside out. Despite all his years of training, Kepler began to scream. When the pain finally abated enough for him to think clearly again, he saw Doctor standing at his side with a clipboard, scribbling notes.

“Would you like to tell me your name now?” she asked, still smiling.

Kepler said nothing, just focused on calming his breathing.

Doctor stepped out of his field of vision, and nine steps later he heard first the buzz of a comms system, and then the door opening again. Another pair of footsteps entered the room. “I think that’s enough for today,” Doctor said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Now, make sure you get some rest; you’re going to need your strength.”

***

Doctor, it turned out, had a fondness for inflicting pain in various ways, which Kepler could have related to had he not been the subject of her dubious affections. Still, his training held firm, and even with Doctor trying new and inventive methods of torture on him, he didn’t let slip who he was, or who he worked for. Goddard would be proud, he thought bitterly.

Eventually, as happens with anything that repeats enough, things fell into a routine. Wake in the morning, eat whatever rations were afforded him, be strapped to a chair or a gurney by brutes in uniform. A visit from Doctor and her cronies, and finally being thrown back into his kennel for a few hours of sleep.

On the fifth cycle, Doctor had paused before asking her questions. She leaned in, something in her expression almost pitying. Kepler hated her for that more than any torture. “They won’t come back for you, you know.” Kepler had said nothing, of course, but she continued. “I may have misled you, before; I already know who sent you. Who else? But your boss isn’t one to waste time on a lost cause. You failed; that’s enough for him to write you off. And, knowing him, he’ll scrub you from every record there is. You’ll be our lab rat until your body can’t take the strain anymore. I almost have to thank him for that; it’s so _difficult_ to find human subjects, these days.”

 _Bluff,_ Kepler thought. Doctor hadn’t mentioned any names, and Kepler knew all too well the importance of the psychological aspect of torture. Destroy the patient’s will, their sense of self, and you’ve already won. Her words did have some effect, though likely not the intended one: they shifted Kepler’s priorities. Around the tenth cycle he stopped counting, and withdrew into himself, shoring up his defenses. Curled protectively around that burning core of hatred, Kepler stopped focusing on survival and began instead to watch for his opportunity to escape. Everyone makes mistakes. He just had to endure until Doctor made hers.

The first clue that she had done so was when he woke up on his own, rather than being rudely jostled awake by someone in a uniform. The next was the relative darkness of the room. _Emergency lightning only - power outage,_ some distant part of him noted. There was a smell in the air, not heavy, but enough to be noticeable. Despite the ache in his muscles and the weakness in his muscles from days (weeks?) of disuse, Kepler snapped to attention immediately. _Blood_ . Heaving himself unsteadily to his feet, Kepler tested the door to his cage, and it swung loosely open. _Sloppy,_ he thought, and grinned. He picked up a scalpel on his way out of the lab.

If there had been any doubt in his mind before this that Goddard had finally come for him, it was dispelled when he saw the first body. Even if it wasn’t Goddard - which seemed unlikely - someone who was murdering these people was already someone he’d rather have on his side. The logical next step, then, was to find whoever had attacked the facility.

The easiest thing to do was follow the bodies. At first there were just a few, taken out with clean shots to the head or heart - efficient, methodical, expected. But the further in he got, the messier things became. That in and of itself was disquieting; Goddard was a lot of things, but ‘messy’ had never been one of them. One man he passed he recognized; one of Doctor’s guards. He was still struggling, blood pouring from his ruined side as he reached out a hand in supplication, which Kepler kicked away with a grunt. He hadn’t realized that there were so many people working in this facility, but then again, ‘torture’ wasn’t likely on the CV of most scientists not already employed by Goddard.

Finally, he came to the end of the hallway. The door was partially ajar, and Kepler could hear an arrhythmic series of dull, staccato thuds coming from the room beyond. Scalpel in his good hand, he carefully pushed the door open. His first step into the room made a quiet squelching noise.

Inside was a scene of carnage; what had once apparently been a cafeteria was now an abattoir. At least six white-coated bodies were scattered over the tables and floor, and the heavy, metallic scent of blood hung thick in the air. One or two of them appeared to have been shot, but the rest lay in various unnatural positions, as though tossed aside with the casual cruelty of a child playing with ragdolls. Near the centre of the room a lone figure stood, rifle tossed aside, a length of pipe in his hands. He raised it above his head in preparation for another strike, but at Kepler’s entrance he dropped it, the clatter of metal on tile echoing like a shot. In the same motion he drew a pistol and aimed it unflinchingly at Kepler’s head. For a long moment, they stared at each other, and then the man lowered his weapon.

“Sir,” he said.

“Mr. Jacobi,” Kepler replied.

“I thought they killed you.”

“I think you know me better than that.”

Jacobi smiled. He hadn’t even bothered to re-holster his weapon. His hair was stiff in places with drying blood, there were spots of it on his face, his arms were splashed with gore up to the elbows, and his clothing would be entirely unsalvageable. In his sleep-deprived, adrenaline-high state, Kepler was certain for a moment that he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

When he was able to tear his eyes away from that image, he glanced down. Next to the bloody pile at Jacobi’s feet lay the twisted remains of a familiar pair of black glasses. For a moment, he considered retrieving Jacobi’s pipe and picking up where he had left off.

“Sir?”

Kepler snapped back into the moment. “If you’re finished, Mr. Jacobi, I would suggest that we get out of here.”

“Right.” Finally re-holstering his gun, Jacobi stepped over the body at his feet, which made a quiet noise of pain. When he reached Kepler he hesitated for just a moment, then continued on ahead. Kepler followed, close behind. “I’ve got the facility set to blow on your command, Colonel,” he said.

“Good.” Kepler focused on the back of his subordinate’s head, on getting one foot in front of the other. “You did good work today, Mr. Jacobi.”

“Thank you, sir.” The words were casual, but even from behind Kepler could see the slight swell of pride his words had effected. “And the samples?”

The samples. The original point of their mission. They would be in the lab, somewhere, he was sure, somewhere amidst the vials and tools Doctor had used on him. He thought about his cage, and the moaning lump of flesh left in the cafeteria.. “We never found them,” he said, voice level. “A shame, but if Cutter’s pet scientist is half as brilliant as he’s supposed to be, he won’t need the help.”

“Roger that.” Jacobi wanted to ask more, Kepler could feel it, but he says nothing. He’s too well-trained.

A short while later, they emerged into the blinding light of day. The sun was setting behind the grey concrete warehouses lining this part of wherever-they-were, and Maxwell was leaning against a nondescript black van parked a safe distance away, arms crossed impatiently. When she saw them approach she straightened, looking both the men over.

“Looks like you had some fun in there,” she deadpanned, opening the door. “Let’s get going, I’ve got work I could be doing.”

“Give me a second, here - properly imploding a facility like this is an _art_ , you know.” Jacobi reached into the van, rummaging around, and as he and Maxwell continued to bicker, Kepler leaned against the passenger seat door and  turned to look back at Doctor’s silent warehouse. He was started out of his contemplation by a hesitant tap on the shoulder.

Maxwell was sitting in the open side of the van, legs dangling lazily. Jacobi stood just beside Kepler, holding out a detonator. “You want to do the honors, sir?”

Wordlessly, Kepler reached out, but instead of taking the detonator, he pressed his hand down onto the button, briefly clasping Jacobi’s hand.

For a moment, that was how they stood, side by side, hand in hand, watching the building fall into itself silhouetted against the molten gold of the setting sun. Then, the moment was past, Kepler dropped his hand to his side, and everyone got back to work.

Jacobi started to climb into the driver’s seat, then paused, looking to Kepler.

Too tired to argue, Kepler hauled his protesting body into the passenger seat. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
